Samsung has applied a dot matrix design on each side of its eco-friendly corrugated cardboard boxes, allowing customers to cut the boxes more easily and assemble them into various other uses, such as small end tables or houses for pets.

Included within the packaging is a manual to guide customers on how to make household items out of the cardboard boxes, which can be accessed by scanning the QR code on the box. Owners of The Serif who tend to put shelves and furniture around the TV can build cat houses, magazine racks and even shelves from the cardboard boxes to store household items and electronic devices, including the remote control.

Earlier this year, Samsung had already won CES 2020 Innovation Awards for its eco-packaging concept for promoting the efficient use of resources. As part of the rollout of the new eco-packaging, Samsung and Dezeen, a British lifestyle magazine, held a global design competition in April, where the two companies awarded the most unique and practical designs and applied the designs into its eco-packaging manual.

“Consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand that shares similar fundamentals and values as they do, and with our eco-packaging, we believe that we can provide our customers with a modern solution that considers the environment as an important way to express themselves,” said Nivash Ramsern, Head: Visual Display at Samsung South Africa.

For more information on the design competition, please visit Dezeen’s website at www.dezeen.com and Samsung TV Instagram(@samsungtv).

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – 03 September 2018 – Samsung and Dezeen, a leading design and architectural magazine based in the UK, announced the grand prize winner of the co-hosted ‘Dezeen x Samsung Ambient Mode Design Competition’ at IFA 2018 on August 31. “Kinetic Decor,” designed by Matthew Cockeril, Stephen Waller and Peter Hälldahl of UK and Denmark-based Swift Creatives, was honoured with the grand prize and €8,000 prize money, for best demonstrating how the Ambient Mode feature in Samsung’s QLED TV transforms the TV into something meaningful, even when switched off.

The Dezeen x Samsung Ambient Mode Design Competition, held from June 25 to August 3, focused on the evolving usability of the Ambient Mode, a new feature on Samsung’s QLED TV which blends the TV into the living room and the surrounding space by mimicking the wall’s colour and displaying desired content and information such as the news, weather, photos and music. In order to enter the competition, entrants submitted their best Ambient Mode designs using static or animated images.

“Now in its second consecutive year, the Dezeen x Samsung Ambient Mode Design Competition provides the perfect opportunity to honour leading designers from around the world while acquiring graphic designs that reflect the premium quality of our TVs,” says Justin Hume, Chief Marketing Officer at Samsung South Africa. “The opportunities to increase the usability of the QLED TV’s Ambient Mode is endless. The designs are reflections of how we imagine the Ambient Mode – as a feature that enriches the everyday lifestyles of our consumers across the world.”

The contest awarded €29,500 in total prize money, reflecting Samsung’s ambition to celebrate talented designers and acquire premium concept and design quality from all around the world. The judging panel this year included esteemed designers, Neville Brody and Erwan Bouroullec, who selected the winner based on a complex set of criteria – a full understanding of the Ambient Mode, as well as overall design, originality, usability and seamlessness with the surrounding space and user lifestyle.

The winning design “Kinetic Decor” is a digital re-staging of the ‘mobile’ concept, with the live movements of the design’s fish becoming more animated as a room’s lighting increases or a user approaches. The submission especially received high marks for its connectivity with Ambient Mode content that is already available today.

“Our design aims to bring calm and a beautifully dynamic structure into the living space,” said Swift Creatives team member, Matthew Cockeril. “We were motivated to apply because of the unique way Samsung’s display technology supports designs that are responsive and sensitive to the people within the space it sits.”

Alongside the grand prize winner, four finalists were shortlisted with their designs exhibited as special displays within the Samsung booth at IFA 2018. The designs include “Time Frame,” displaying the outside scenery on the TV; “Bird Clock,” picturing birds sitting on a power line to indicate time; “Architectural Extension,” a virtual space like the balcony that creates the illusion of extended space; and “Sphere,” displaying graphics of the Earth’s rotation matched with relevant content and data, including photos, news and friends’ social media posts.

In order to extend the ecosystem of Ambient Mode, Samsung will roll out a Software Development Kit (SDK) in beta version later this year.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, 02 July 2018 – Samsung Electronics recently announced a partnership with Dezeen, a leading design and architectural magazine, inviting designers to create graphics for the Ambient Mode feature on Samsung’s QLED TVs. Held until August 3, the contest will reward 29,500 euros (R468,969) in total prize money. To enter the contest, designers need to submit their best Ambient Mode designs using either static or animated images.

Samsung’s Ambient Mode does away with the mundane black screen that dominates a room when the television is not in use. Built into the 2018 QLED televisions, Ambient Mode makes the screen appear transparent by mimicking the appearance of the wall behind it, while also enhancing its environment by overlaying additional imagery and information – such as the weather – if desired.

“Ambient Mode creates a useful and innovative experience for users, even when their television is turned off. Knowing that this experience is unique to every user, the Ambient Mode design competition is meant to develop imagery that resonates with each of our consumers,” said Jongsuk Chu, Senior Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “We hope that designers will take this opportunity to show off their creativity and help us grow the library of designs available to consumers on Ambient Mode.”

In order to enter, contestants must pick one of the four backgrounds provided by Samsung and develop concepts that build on both the television’s environment and the time of day in which the feature would be utilised. Designers can base their entry on one of Samsung’s existing Ambient Modes – décor, information or personal photos – or they can propose a completely novel mode. Further, as Samsung and Dezeen are looking for concepts that highlight how Ambient Mode can mirror the environment and blend into the aesthetic of consumers’ homes, entrants will need to specify a particular lifestyle for their design.

Justin Hume, Chief Marketing Officer for Samsung South Africa, says, “This is where exceptionally innovative design and creativity come together – we are looking forward to seeing what the participating artists come up with.”

The competition’s judging panel includes esteemed designers Neville Brody and Erwan Bouroullec, as well as members of Samsung’s and Dezeen’s design teams – Dontae Lee, Executive Vice President and the Head of the Corporate Design Centre at Samsung Electronics and Amy Frearson, editorial director of Dezeen.

The competition will reward 29,500 euros (R468,969) in total prize money. The grand prize winner will receive 8,000 euros (R127,178) while two runners-up will receive 3,000 euros (R47,691), respectively. 1,500 euros (R23,845) will be awarded to the other seven shortlisted entrants and 1,000 euros (R15,897) will be given to five longlisted designers. Dezeen will interview the finalists and publish a story about each of them.

The competition entry is free of charge. However, entrants must be over 18 years of age with the ability to present their work to a panel of English-speaking judges. For more information on how to enter, please visit dezeen.com/Samsung.

This is the second contest in which Samsung and Dezeen have partnered to organise. In 2017, the two companies cooperated to host a TV accessory design competition for Samsung QLED line-up’s TV stands and received a total of 1,200 works from 83 countries. The contest participant Fulden Denheli received a grand prize and later was also named the winner at IFA 2017 for her adaptable, Scandinavian-inspired concept.

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